One of the cornerstones of capitalist economic theory, taught and practiced in the business, government and academic sectors of the United States of America, is called the “effective market hypothesis”.
This hypothesis states that the free market is an “efficient” market, which means that it ideally meets the needs of consumers in the country at prices that they can afford.
I disagree.
The “effective market hypothesis” claims that markets are rational, which means that they will automatically adjust prices to match the supply (and needs) of certain goods (be it food, clothing, housing, or gasoline).
However, one of the problems with an effective market hypothesis is that markets are not rational, because markets are created by people, not computers, and most people (according to my observations) are not rational.
In fact, from what I witnessed, I would say that most people seem coolly irrational.
Thus, it would be reasonable to argue that markets produced by human animals (for things such as food, clothing, gasoline, and housing) will naturally not fluctuate with the needs of consumers, but rather, as a rule, charge the prices set as high as the sellers of these various goods can get away with charging.
But what if thousands of people in a place like a snowy environment cannot afford to pay what the housing sellers demand?
Should they kindly sleep outside in the snow?
I do not think so.
But many of them do it.
What for?
I cannot say conclusively, but after visiting the city of Boston, Massachusetts in the spring of 2012, I had the opportunity to meet quite a lot of many, many thousands of homeless people who stayed in this city and that I was shocking:
Then it turned out that in this city there were more than ten thousand homeless people, in sharp contrast with the large number of “rental” signs that I saw in different houses and apartment buildings in the city, and in different suburbs.
I met former businessmen and women, many of whom have lost their jobs in a mass company — the recession inclusions of the 1990 & # 39; s and the 2000s, (which, apparently, caused their companies to aggressively reduce their jobs), in what to solve in the tens of millions of Americans who are taken out of work (and in many cases they and their families are evicted from their houses).
Having learned about the struggle of homeless people in the United States of America, the first thing I noticed was that the formal and informal network created to help the homeless really helped very little in any real, tangible way when it came to housing people who first needed this.
Instead, most of the organizations I contacted and interacted with seemed to offer everything except.
Food, clothing, toiletries (and in some of the best amenities, telephone calls, and sometimes showers) were often available, but the real progress in achieving permanent housing seemed to be steadily (and insanely) elusive, not just for me , but for almost all the homeless people with whom I met and talked.
The lack of one cruel that homeless people most need seems to lead to a very high level of despair among many of the dozens of homeless people I have spoken with, and that despair often seems to have forced many people to engage in self-destructive behavior and even angry verbal flashes.
More depressingly, that despair seemed to intensify because of self-hatred, many homeless people seemed to be experiencing after such (usually justified, but often mistakenly directed) outbreaks, and many of the people I met seemed to descend into defect and deeper predicament.
Many began to resort to the habitual use of alcohol or drugs, in an obvious attempt to stun feelings of resentment and self-hatred, which seemed to devour them.
Then, when the same people suffered in order to look for housing, those accidents involving self-medicating with alcohol or drugs would be included in their “client profile”, and many of them would refuse the category of “bad client” and often:
1) forcibly leave homeless shelters,
2) forced to "meet with the police",
3) forced to attend burdensome anti-drug abuse classes and meetings (despite the fact that some of them had no place to sleep at night)
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4) forced to "leave the neighborhood" of the homeless Vault and leave ...
Where?
As a result, many of the hundreds of homeless people I met in Boston, Massachusetts, Manchester, New Hampshire, Miami, Florida, San Diego, California and Los Angeles, California, seemed to have no choice but to live outside months, years (and some, even decades), at the same time, sometimes even on ice and snow.
I met several men who spent the previous winter in New England, some in tents in the snowy forests, and some of them slept weakly on top of the heated lattices to avoid the bitter (and sometimes deadly) below - freezing, winter night temperature
It turned out that every few nights in one of the major northeastern cities of the United States someone dies from sleep during a bitter winter winter. In rare attempts to avoid such tragedies, police in progressive Cambridge, Massachusetts, rode all night long and during major snowstorms in search of people who fell asleep on the street.
While exploring the back streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the middle of several of these bitter cold nights, I sometimes saw people gathered inside cardboard boxes weakly (and dangerously) trying to survive at night without freezing to death.
Even more shocking was the fact that in most major cities that I visited (for example, in Boston, Massachusetts, Miami, Florida, San Diego, California and Los Angeles, California), everyone seemed to have their main homeless shelters located in their center, often in the immediate vicinity (and sometimes in sight) of luxurious, high-rise, residential condominiums, many of which had dozens of empty apartments for rent.
Thus, while many of us may have taught in college economics courses, the fact is that the free housing market in the United States of America is not at all effective. In fact, if you learn the ins and outs of many of the large, urban, residential markets of the United States, you will often find that they are extremely inefficient.
Worse, the extreme contrast between the levels of satisfaction of living city dwellers and low-income city dwellers seems to have led to levels of hostility that were not only dull, but even dangerous.
As a result of the predictable frustrating experiences of these two extremely alienated groups of “having more than enough” and “don-that-is-all”, conflicts often flared up, and those who ran fled to hide inside, and the police sometimes come to visit and interrogate the homeless. which were usually frightened back, "wherever they come."
As a result, many of the homeless people with whom I met, apparently, developed a growing level of outrage towards the United States of America and the rich (or those who perceived it).
Five months later, after seeing social divisions and other social unrest caused by homelessness and wealth inequality in Boston, Massachusetts, I took a bus to Manchester, New Hampshire, where I witnessed the same aggressive social dynamics at work, actively emphasizing our national unity and a sense of coherence.
Unable to find a job in Manchester, New Hampshire, and knowing that winter in the mountains of cold New Hampshire was fast approaching, I boarded a plane on November 3 and flew to Miami, Florida.
Upon arriving in Miami, I jumped onto the bus right in Miami Beach, where I witnessed the same, depressing social inequality that happens right at the winter festivals of one of the busiest international tourist hotspots in the western hemisphere,
While there, I again noticed the very super-luxury residential high-rise condominiums that I saw in Boston, Massachusetts, many seemingly built over the last decade or so during the supposed “recession” in which millions were seen American jobs (and wages) moved to foreign countries, while corporate profits soared, sending average Dow Johns and rich bank accounts to unheard of heights.
Even more disturbing, while in Miami Beach, I noticed that many of the poor homeless women I met seemed compelled to sell their bodies in order to afford basic living needs, such as food, clothing, shelter or medicine. .
Many of the homeless people I’ve met with seem to have spent at least half of my time hiding from police helicopters, cruisers and all-terrain vehicles, who seemed to patrol the beaches tirelessly trying to haunt them from the view of the well-thought-out international visitors who slide into this city all winter.
When I was not resting in my tent, understood in the sand dunes, next to the impressive “South Beach”, I spent my days talking on the seashore running parallel to the beach. Strolling once, I met a homeless African-American war veteran in Iraq, just returned from a fight.
It appears that he suffers from a serious case of “post-traumatic stress disorder” as a result of his foot blowing off the suicide bombers' attack on the Humvee caravan he went to, and it looks like he was in terrible daily pain, although the army doctors somehow Somehow, they surgically reattached their leg.
He spent his days sitting next to the house on the boardwalk, and seemed embarrassed, depressed and very, very angry with the way he was used, and apparently left and got rid of the government of our countries and the military establishment.
After several months in Miami Beach, the police presence haunted me there, and other homeless people became too overwhelming, so I decided to move to Hollywood Beach, Florida.
Hollywood, Florida - an interesting city. Most of them are not located near the beach, but are located inside the country, being desperately separated from the coastline from the “intraosseous waterway” and therefore very wet, although very calm and sociable, inside the country.
The beach itself is almost entirely for tourists. It has a beautiful promenade, is very clean and quiet, and is great for:
- families with children
- to those who dislike (or cannot tolerate) diverse or international crowds,
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- those who need a break from faster dark beaches, such as Miami Beach.
However, being in the inner part of the city of Hollywood, I met people who discovered me that one of the homeless shelters charged a “rent” for people who were sleeping there, even sending disabled people to street corners to sell homeless people, propaganda newspapers every day. make money to pay your rent.
Once, when I was walking down the street, I met a man in a wheelchair with low legs due to a serious neurological disease. Listening to him, he told me that after he had a disagreement with the manager of the homeless Asylum regarding his pain medication, he was unceremoniously evicted on the sidewalk a few blocks away and left everything there himself, even though he could not walk.
Subsequently, the refuge in which he had previously lived was designated by the city and convicted, and the one who exploited it was intimidated from this city of Florida for being:
"Too good for criminally susceptible homeless people."
This was the first sign that in many cities with warm weather there is a tendency towards hatred and hostility towards homeless people, and the more I studied this phenomenon, the more I was concerned.
For example, in both Florida and California, I heard repeated reports that violence was repeatedly subjected to violence against the homeless, and some cities and settlements in Florida seem to have reached the level of an epidemic of such repeated outbreaks against the poor (and sometimes ) living outside, as discussed in this article here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/16/florida-homeless_n_4453312.htmlhtml?temp-new-window-replacement=true
Unfortunately, such crimes also seem to be growing in California, as evidenced by this section of the Huffington Post news site, which discusses the growing epidemic of violence against the homeless:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/homeless-hate-crimes/?temp-new-window-replacement=true
I am convinced that at least part of the reason for this is that poor and working Americans are so angry and upset because of their recent economic difficulties that they hit comfortable, socially acceptable goals, as well as the United States of America, where we worship the rich people, poor people within easy reach become objects of choice.
Worshiping rich people and, as a result, demonizing and dehumanizing poor people are just two symptoms of extreme inequality in wages, incomes and wealth that exist today in the United States of America.
In fact, from my research I would appreciate that the last time the inequality of wealth was so unjust in the United States of America, it was in the late 1800s, in an era of such income inequality, that the main corporation — having the advantages of our Collective Laboratories — was often called robber barons. "
Due to the refusal of corporate owners of the time to fairly share the fruits of their corporations (and the fact that their workers) intensified, the organized labor movement began to take shape, and by 1950 it was able to provide adequate wages and working conditions for tens of millions of American workers, many of which still perform the bulk of the physical work in this country.
This organized labor movement led to the creation of the often idealized “American middle class”, which many recognize as social stability, which has come to encapsulate the idea of the “American dream”.
However, in the 1970s, the new mentality began to infect the hearts and minds of the collective consciousness of the American intelligentsia, and many economists and businessmen began to promote a new world view, which anxiously extolled the perverse paradigm that "greed is good."
In fact, such dangerous contagious slogans were charismatically promoted by protagonists of films glorifying such selfish mentality, as evidenced by Michael Douglas. Gordon Gekko, in 1987, the greedy film "Wall Street".
From 1980, until 1990, until the victory of President Barack Obama in mid-2000, these countries were “greedy-good,” and “this,” all about the money “paradigms were also advanced by using minds rich in cultural television programs, such as:
"Lifestyle of the rich and famous",
and
MTV: The Cheat Sheets.
As a result, the level of hypermaterialism in the United States of America has reached such an epic scale that people who do not have enough money are no longer simply considered “undesirable”, but increasingly, as a subclass, who are “good” for nothing ”, but for destruction .
I believe that this new form of socio-economic fascism represents a very clear and real danger not only for the millions of homeless people in our country, but also for the tens of millions of us who are purely wages, sickness or missed mortgages to pay homeless people.
Thus, contrary to the idea put forward by the generally accepted "free market" economic theory, the free housing market in the United States of America does not seem to be adequate when it comes to meeting the housing needs of people who hide within our countries.
And therefore, I believe that our elected government officials have not only the right, but also the responsibility to intervene and ensure that all people living in our countries border on power have their basic housing needs.
Unfortunately, when discussing such topics in economic discussions, it is often possible to see that some controversial media commentators irresponsibly launch the socio-economic extremist labels of their opponents, trying to isolate and demonize them, usually using one of the following hazy labels:
"Communist", "Socialist", "Redistributor", "Collectivist", etc. ...
However, very few thoughts are often put into precise definitions of these terms.
Имея это в виду, я хотел бы предложить свое мнение относительно того, что, по моему мнению, является правильным определением и надлежащим использованием таких социально-экономических ярлыков:
Во-первых, «коммунист» обычно рассматривается как человек, который верит в полностью равное владение средствами и производством продукции промышленности стран.
(Раньше эта цель часто достигалась правительственным мандатом (обычно посредством «национализации» частных корпораций наций (форма захвата и перераспределения, которую большинство считают недопустимым большинством)).
На противоположном конце социально-экономического философского спектра мы имеем то, что обычно называют «капиталистами».
Капиталисты - это те, кто верит в предотвращение неодинаковой собственности на средства и продукцию производства промышленности стран.
(В недавней американской истории эта философия преследовалась почти до крайности, несправедливой переделкой налоговой политики и кодексов наших стран и создала в нашей стране много десятков миллионов «работающих бедных» (которые, по-видимому, растут день)).
Обе эти крайности (коммунизма и капитализма) в целом оказались очень неэффективными формами экономической политики в прошлом, и, к сожалению, они часто могут приводить к широко распространенному насилию (о чем свидетельствуют случаи как французских, так и российских революций ).
Более разумно, был бы теоретический баланс между этими двумя крайностями, называемыми «социализм».
Социализм (при условии, что он не применяется насилием или сопровождается расовыми, религиозными или этнически супрематическими теориями), как правило, является наилучшим экономическим подходом для экономики наций, поскольку как крайности «капитализма», так и «коммунизма» исторически доказали быть неэффективными моделями для удовлетворения материальных и духовных потребностей народных масс.
Такие недостатки в удовлетворении потребностей населения наций иногда могут приводить к:
Насильственные внутренние «гражданские» войны (иначе называемые «революции»), как и в случае дореволюционной России (где царская аристократия пыталась насильственно править нациями репрессивно неравноправную феодальную крестьянскую сельскохозяйственную экономику,
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Насильственные, внешне агрессивные войны, такие как те, которые мы наблюдаем в современных Соединенных Штатах Америки, лидеры которых, похоже, находятся в бесконечных поисках квихотов, чтобы (ошибочно) выявлять и вытеснять своих бесправных граждан с яростью в их растущем экономическом неблагополучии на удобные внешние, внешние цели.
Вместо этого было бы полезно, чтобы руководители наших стран умерили нашу нынешнюю гиперкапиталистическую ориентацию с более социалистическими экономическими принципами.
